Weekly Music Roundup: Mitski, Los Bitchos, Yungchen Lhamo

This week, say hello to Wet Leg, hello again to Mitski, and goodbye to India’s Lata Mangeshkar. Also, new music with a love of cumbia from both Los Bitchos and Calexico, and a new album by Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo

RIP: Lata Mangeshkar

This weekend, one of the most popular singers on the planet passed away. Lata Mangeshkar may not have been a household name in much of America, but anywhere in the South Asian diaspora, from Mumbai to Guyana to Durban to Queens, she was a legendary figure. For decades, she was the undisputed queen of the “playback singers,” whose voices produced the hit songs in Bollywood, India’s gargantuan film industry. Whenever an actress sang a romantic duet, or a flirty dance number, or a nostalgic ballad on screen, it seemed Lata Mangeshkar’s voice was what we heard. She was, at one point, the most recorded voice in human history. (She would later lose that unofficial crown to her younger sister, Asha Bhosle.) She sang in Hindi but also in a number of other Indian languages; and she seemed adaptable to almost any musical style, from the early romantic numbers of the 1940s to the hits of the 70s, when rock and even disco were being incorporated into filmi, as the pop songs in Bollywood were known. Stumbling across her as a teenager, I found her voice to be strangely nasal and alien; but her duets, especially with Kishore Kumar, offer an appealing way in. One of my favorites is this 1971 song, “Aaj Madhosh Hua Jaye Re,” from the film Sharmilee:

Its catchy tune, written by the great soundtrack composer S. D. Burman, is easy to like even if you don’t have any real experience with Bollywood music.    

Lata Mangeshkar died in Mumbai yesterday; she was 92.   

RIP: George Crumb

Also 92, also important, but far less well-known, George Crumb was an American composer who broke all kinds of molds. In the 1960s, at a time when contemporary classical music was largely academic and cerebral, Crumb pursued his own path, characterized by a love of unusual textures and – unusually for the time – a social or political subtext. His piece Black Angels, for amplified string quartet, was a response to the Vietnam War, full of haunting glassy sonorities (wine glasses were used, not for the last time, in this piece) and terrifying explosions of skittering, insect-like noise. Kronos Quartet, which has revolutionized the look and sound of the string quartet in the past half century, was formed specifically to play Black Angels. Crumb’s works often involved performers who had to sing, shout, whisper, or count (numerology played a role in some of his works) in addition to playing their instruments in often unaccustomed ways. Vox Balaenae, or “the voice of the whale,” called for 3 masked performers lit in deep blues that suggested the ocean; like some of his works, it seemed more ritual than music performance. Crumb wrote several masterpieces for solo piano, which he found an almost inexhaustible resource for new sounds: strumming the strings, laying sheets of paper on the strings to create a rustling effect, etc. One of his later ones is Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik – “a little midnight music,” the title a play on Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusick (“a little night music”) and Thelonius Monk’s jazz standard “Round Midnight,” whose theme is varied throughout this nocturnal piece.    

In this excerpt, “Blues In The Night,” the theme is played slowly right at the top before moving on to a kind of abstraction of the blues.  

Wet Leg Is Britain’s Worst-Kept Secret

Wet Leg, the British band led by singers Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, won’t be releasing their debut album until April. But by that point, the word “debut” will be beside the point. Wet Leg burst onto the scene last summer with the hilariously deadpan – and sneakily catchy – single “Chaise Longue,” and promptly made it onto almost everyone’s 2021 Best Of lists. (You haven’t seen the video yet? Stop right now and click here.) Now they’ve released their latest song, “Oh No.” It’s a song about being unable to get your nose out of your phone – a common enough problem; but as the video shows, the reason Rhian and Heather can’t tear themselves away is that they’re scrolling through the written comments on their YouTube videos. The post-punk guitars are a little grungier sounding here, but Wet Leg’s already-trademarked dry wit and sharp gaze are very much in evidence again.

The album Wet Leg comes out on April 8. All of their tour dates, including March 10 at Brooklyn Steel, are already sold out.  

Soulful Tibetan Music from Yungchen Lhamo

Since fleeing Tibet (by walking over the Himalayas with her young son!), Yungchen Lhamo has become one of the most prominent Tibetan musicians in the world. She’s sung for the Dalai Lama, recorded with Peter Gabriel, and brought her ethereal vocals to a global audience. Her new album, due in March, will be called Awakening, and she’s just released the title track. Lhamo’s songs are usually prayers first, music second; but for those of us who don’t understand the words of the prayers, the music is more than enough. Here, “Awakening” begins with Yungchen Lhamo singing a cappella, over a recording of lapping waves, weaving a serpentine melody that is echoed by delayed vocal tracks. Instruments eventually enter and offer a reflective, cross-cultural accompaniment to the layered vocals, and when the song has ended, a brief chant with drum and bell accompaniment brings us close to the traditional sound of Tibetan prayer. 

Baroque Meets Pop When Anthony Roth Costanzo Meets Justin Vivian Bond

Talk about queering the narrative: Classical and pop music collided hard, and often humorously, when countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo and trans cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond first unveiled their musical/theater show Only An Octave Apart in 2021. They recently did a concert version for the New York Philharmonic, and now have released the musical portions of the show on an LP, also called Only An Octave Apart. Constanzo, who starred in the Met Opera’s acclaimed production of Akhnaten, the Philip Glass opera, soars majestically over Bond’s campy tenor, in a collection of standards, classical works, pop songs (they recreate the David Bowie/Freddy Mercury duo “Under Pressure”), and most notably, medleys that mix everything together. “Didos” blends one of the great arias from the Baroque opera world – “When I Am Laid In Earth” by Henry Purcell, more commonly known as “Dido’s Lament” – with the 2003 hit song “White Flag” by the singer named Dido. Maybe a medley based on the same name seems trite and obvious, but this one is unexpectedly poignant, although a very quick snippet of I Pagliacci at the very end seems to break the mood by sending it up somehow. Still, the arrangement is lovely and effective, and the singers sound totally committed. And if, elsewhere, they sound like they should be committed, well, that’s all part of the fun. 

Instrumental Festivities from Los Bitchos

Let The Festivities Begin is the debut album by Los Bitchos, four women based in London who blend the sounds of 70s Turkish pop and South American chicha and cumbia rhythms together with the sound of 60s surf rock. “I Enjoy It” is a party-ready track with more than a hint of psychedelia (the album is produced by Alex Kapranos of the band Franz Ferdinand); and I suppose it isn’t literally instrumental since you can hear the musicians’ voices speaking in the background – one phrase is distinct enough to give the track its title.  

Southwestern Cumbia Rock from Calexico

Calexico’s music has always been a mashup of indie rock, mariachi horns, and, in recent years, the sounds of other Latin music, especially cumbia. Now, they’re preparing to release a new album, El Mirador, on April 8. And the first single to be released is the title track. The title means “the lookout,” or “the view point,” and it’s a bilingual treat, with English verses and Spanish chorus, all over a dusty, desert version of the cumbia rhythm. The song is full of surprises – an unexpected key change towards the end, an aching fiddle solo, and some guest vocals by songwriter Gaby Moreno.   

Mitski’s Laurel Hell Comes Out, Along With A New Video

Friday saw the release of Mitski’s new album, the hotly anticipated Laurel Hell. Also on Friday, The Guardian published an article headlined “Meet Mitski, the US’s Best Young Songwriter.” And, that same day, she released a video for the song “Stay Soft,” a track that marries pain and desire, rock guitars and a driving dance beat. The video amplifies one of the album’s themes – the hidden menace behind some of the things we most aspire to, like fame. In it, Mitski’s gothic topiary garden becomes a place not just of beauty but of violence. 

Mitski begins her North American tour in two weeks – all of the dates are sold out.